


Blonds Have More Fun

by Mad_Maudlin



Category: SGA - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-23
Updated: 2010-01-23
Packaged: 2017-10-06 14:50:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,675
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/54848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mad_Maudlin/pseuds/Mad_Maudlin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John has a little accident off-world. Rodney has a bit of a problem.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blonds Have More Fun

When Rodney heard Weir summoning a medical team to the jumper bay, his first thought was, _You see what happens when they go off-world without me?  
_  
The second one was, _Oh, shit, it's probably Sheppard.  
_  
He ran to the infirmary, as well as he could on the slightly sprained knee (Beckett had called it a "hyperextension") that had kept from going on this mission himself. The infirmary was a buzz of activity, and Rodney's heart sank a little when he saw Carson and the nurses wearing hazmat suits, and the plastic sheeting that hung from the ceilings and spilled into the corridor. But Weir wasn't wearing and special equipment, and as Rodney approached her he realized that the emergency showers--the ones they'd installed in case of chemical accidents--were running full blast behind sheets of opaque tarp. "What the hell happened?"

Weir sighed. "Let's just say I don't think we're going to get anything out of the Rashkans' anti-Wraith technology."

"What did he _do_?"

Teyla stepped out of the shower, wrapped in a large fluffy towl and still dripping water; her eyes were horribly bloodshot and her face and hands were red, and sore. "The Rashkans are now in a state of civil war. The rebel leader attempted to take us hostage in order to procure weapons from Atlantis."

"And they used chemical weapons on you?"

Teyla shook her head. "The production of the anti-Wraith reagent has severely polluted their world." She accepted another towel from a nurse and started drying her hair--which, Rodney suddenly noticed, was looking distinctly lighter in color. "After Colonel Sheppard shot the rebel leaders, we had to swim away from their encampment before the fire he started reached their cache of weapons."

"Of course you did," Rodney mumbled. This was exactly what happened when they went off-world without him.

Carson took Teyla's towel and pointed her towards a bed. "Sit down over there and let me have a look at you. I don't suppose you have any idea what sort of runoff was in that lake?"

Teyla shook her head. "I am fine, doctor. Colonel Sheppard was in the water for far longer."

The safety showers shut off. "I'm fine," Sheppard croaked from the other side of the curtain. "Just got some water up my nose."

Carson rolled his eyes. "Aye, and who knows what else with it? Let's have a look at you, Colonel."

Sheppard stepped out of the safety shower. His towel, unlike Teyla's, barely reached mid-thigh, and it was plastered to his wet body. His face and hands were red and raw, his eyes were watering freely, and blood was still leaking from one of his nostrils.

And his hair, plastered flat against his head....

Beckett snorted. "Well, there's a clue--some kind of bleaching agent."

Sheppard scowled at the wet clump of bangs that hung in his eyes--brittle-looking bangs that were distinctly yellower than when he'd gone through the gate. "I wasn't even in the water that long," he mumbled.

"Which is what I'm afraid of," Beckett said. He waved Sheppard over to the scanner. "Up with you, now, and let's make sure you haven't burned any holes in your lungs."

Sheppard jumped onto the scanner bed. He didn't cross his legs. Rodney left the room.

He always did have a bit of a thing for blonds.

XXXXX

Rodney didn't come back to the infirmary until late in the evening, and only because he heard that Sheppard was staying overnight. Teyla had been released (and now sported some fetching highlights) so Rodney couldn't think of why Sheppard would have to stay, unless he'd done something even more ridiculously ill-concieved than jump into a river that made the Cuyahoga look like a mineral spring. According to Zelenka's mission report, the surface of the water had _glowed_.

He found Sheppard sitting up in his bed, which was a good sign, reading War and Peace. Sheppard was completely dry, dressed, and had a blanket in his lap, which was even better. His hair sprang up in frail-looking tufts, nearly white at the ends but close to the natural color at the roots, threaded with brassy highlights in the middle. He had bandages on his hands and, alarmingly, an oxygen cannula running under his nose.

He noticed Rodney and smiled, though. "Hey there," he said, still sounding hoarse. "Come to point and stare?"

_Colonel, you have no idea,_ Rodney thought, but for once he managed not to actually blurt it out. "Hardly, although I must say, your resemblance to a dandelion is striking."

"Ha, ha," Sheppard shut the book and set it aside, briefly tangling with the cannula as he did so. "You're going to have to work harder than that, McKay, I've got have half the expedition teasing me about this."

"You did bring it on yourself," Rodney said. "What's with the oxygen, anyway?"

Sheppard rolled his bloodshot eyes. "Beckett thinks I might've inhaled something nasty in the glowy river. Says he has to take the precaution."

Rodney wanted to make some sort of clipped and sardonic comment about either Beckett's paranoia or Sheppard's callous response to the 'glowy river,' but every single thought was driven from his mind when Sheppard straightened up in bed and folded his legs. The blanket still covered his lap admirably, but because Rodney knew what was under there, it might as well have been made of clear plastic.

Rodney stood up, immediately recognized the flaw in this plan, and backed up behind some sort of monitor, which beeped at him. "Well, it's been lovely, Colonel, but I have to get back to the lab--"

"Rodney!" Beckett called, coming around the corner. He had an odd plastic pipe with a right-angle bend in his hand. "Just the man I wanted to see."

"You did?" Rodney asked, horrified.

Beckett handing the plastic pipe to Sheppard, nodding. "Radek's trying to figure out what sort of chemical by-products Teyla and Colonel Sheppard were exposed to, based on the data he got from the Rashkans. Could you give him a hand with the analysis?"

"Carson, you do know we have actual chemists here, don't you?" Rodney said, then cursed himself for rejecting a potential excuse for getting away from the blond man on the bed.

"Yes, and Radek's ask Doctor Kupara to help him as well—"

"Doc, Rodney's busy," Sheppard said, with a peculiar little arch of one brittle blond eyebrow. "He has to get back to his lab."

Beckett looked at the both of them like they were insane, and Rodney once again cursed his inability to tell a straight-faced lie. "I'll check their analysis when it's done," Rodney said. "You don't think it's that serious, do you?"

"Not unless they swallowed the water," Beckett said, with a look at Sheppard that said _which I wouldn't put past you._ "But it's just a precaution."

"What do you want me to do with this?" Sheppard asked, examining the pipe--one end was opaque, but the other was transparent, and marked at regular intervals up the side. A small plastic bobber rested at the bottom, but slid to the top as Sheppard turned it over.

"It's just a quick lung-function test," Beckett said. "Blow into that and we'll see if you're breathing fine."

"Teyla didn't have to do a lung-function test," Sheppard said.

"Teyla wasn't wheezing when I examined her,"

"I'm not wheezing!"

"Blow in the bloody tube."

Sheppard sighed, then took a deep breath and inserted the opaque end of the tube into his mouth. His lips wrapped around the hard white plastic, leaving little moist trails as they slipped into place. He exhaled forcefully, sending the little bobber rocketing upwards, then inhaled through the device, making his cheeks go hollow.

Rodney had to leave the room again.

XXXXX

Of the small number of things that Rodney knew of which could travel faster than the speed of light, gossip was one of them. By the time he made to Zelenka's lab early the next morning, the word around Atlantis was that Beckett had put some kind of medical hold on Sheppard for the indefinite future. "No strenuous exercise," Zelenka reported as Rodney reviewed the data. "Meaning, of course, no offworld activity."

"Shame," Rodney said. "Do you think they could manage to produce any more carcinogens with this process?"

"The reagent does seem highly effective," Zelenka said. "If we had not been attacked, I would have brought back samples."

"Effective, right," Rodney, muttered, pushing away the laptop. "Assuming your goal is to commit environmental hara-kiri before the Wraith can get you."

"I'm not going to grow another arm or something, am I?"

Rodney was far too startled; he spun around, almost tipped his chair over, and found Sheppard leaning against the doorway, smiling and blond. Zelenka didn't seem to notice Rodney's problem. "Not likely, Colonel," he said. "I will forward these results to Carson, but I don't think you were exposed to anything long enough to be seriously harmed."

Sheppard snorted. "Right. Just the dye job."

"And the wheezing," Rodney said.

"I'm not wheezing," Sheppard said peevishly. "Beckett just says I can't get the thingy up high enough."

Rodney was of the opinion that there were plenty of other thingies Sheppard could get up with impressive reliability. "I," he said, "I'm sure he's just being cautious."

Sheppard and Zelenka both looked at him funny. "Right," Sheppard said, excruciatingly slow. "Cautious."

Zelenka cleared his throat. "Was there something you wanted, Colonel?"

Sheppard shrugged. "Not really. Just wondering if you guys needed anything activated, or shot, or something."

"Not that I know of," Rodney said slowly.

"You sure?" Sheppard said. He actually looked hopeful. "'Cause with no missions and no PT, I'm pretty much free all day."

While Rodney was overcome with horror, Zelenka shrugged. "We will let you know if something comes up," he said.

The hell we will, thought Rodney, who had something coming up entirely against his will.

"Thanks," Sheppard said.

He did not leave the doorway.

"Is there anything else, Colonel?" Rodney asked in the voice he had once perfected for making post-docs cringe in fear.

"Not really," Sheppard said. He was looking disappointed now, with a distinct pout to his lower lip.

"Do you need anything else, Rodney?" Zelenka asked.

Rodney briefly panicked. "I, uh, well, that is, I uh," _shit, what is Zelenka doing again, something with the sensors--or maybe at sensors--a sensor device? Or is that Belkin? I thought Belkin was doing the thing with the thing with Kusinagi, oh shit,--_ "No."

"Mind if I walk with you back to your lab?" Sheppard asked.

"Why?" Rodney blurted.

Sheppard blinked at him. "Because I'm bored?"

Rodney buried his face in his hands.

XXXXX

Rodney quickly discovered that the only thing worse than a blond John Sheppard was a John Sheppard who was blond and _bored_.

Because really, for the military commander of an intergalactic outpost, Sheppard didn't _do_ a whole lot outside of the off-world missions. Rodney supposed that he'd never noticed this because he was usually on the same missions. Now, though, Sheppard was stuck in the city, and also medically barred from most of his usual hobbies--which wouldn't normally have stopped him, except that Beckett had a way of muttering darkly about "deficient lung function" that had half the base convinced the colonel would drop dead at any time. Unlike previous instances of medical trouble, though, Sheppard wasn't actually in pain, or turning into a bug, or whatnot.

So it seemed that the doughty lieutenant colonel, faced with ample time to catch up on paperwork, decided that it would be more fun to harass the science department instead.

Rodney snapped after only three days.

"Do something about him!" he begged of Elizabeth--no, not begged, _demanded_. That was the word. "Let him go take a jumper on a joy ride, or send him to the mainland, or give him a sharp object to play with or _something_! Just get him out of our labs!"

Elizabeth cocked her head at him. "Is he being disruptive?"

_Yes!_ Rodney thought. "Yes!" he said, for entirely different reasons. "He...he touches things, he asks stupid questions, he gets in the way..."

"That's funny," Elizabeth said, "because last time I talked to him, Dr. Belkin said John was being remarkably helpful with his sensor experiment."

Rodney made a mental note to use Belkin as a test subject some time. "Well, yippy-skippy for Belkin, but some of us cannot concentrate with Edgar Winter there reading over our shoulders!"

"Has he spent that much time in your lab?"

Any amount of time was too much time in Rodney's book, because Sheppard did touch things, and Rodney was excruciatingly aware of the slide of the colonel's fingers over the surface of any solid object in a ten-foot radius. Sheppard had long fingers, not exactly thin, but well-proportioned...Rodney would be disposed to call them elegant, if he were the sort of man to call anything but an equation elegant, and also if he wouldn't sound _insane_.

"He drinks my coffee," Rodney said instead. "And there are very delicate, very dangerous pieces of equipment in that lab that should not be handled--"

"Rodney, if it's that much of a problem, just ask him to leave," Elizabeth said. "We're all grown-ups here, certainly you can work this out between yourselves."

Oh, Rodney knew exactly how grown-up John Sheppard was. And he wasn't going to discuss with Elizabeth all the things he wanted to work out between the two of them.

He tried lobbying Beckett about it, but he might've had better luck with Hadrian's Wall. "Rodney, the man aspirated a cocktail of corrosive chemicals," Carson said as if Rodney were deranged. "You saw the list yourself. His lungs need time to heal."

"He says he's feeling just fine," Rodney said, "and he certainly looks just fine," and then he slapped a hand over his own mouth and prayed for death.

Carson didn't seem to notice, or even look up from his microscope. "I'm not releasing him to regular duty until I know he's not going to start hemorrhaging," he declared. "And you can tell him so, too, just in case he put you up to this."

"The colonel did not put me up to this," Rodney said, _though he has been putting me up._ "He's being a nuisance around the labs."

"Really? I thought Dr. Belkin was happy to have him."

"Why does everyone keep talking about Belkin? I mean he's irritating _me_."

"What's he doing, then?"

_He has elegant fingers!_ "Look, if you're not going to release him to duty, can't you put him on bed rest? Maybe start giving him oxygen again?"

Carson shook his head, but he was looking at Rodney oddly. "There's no reason to," he said. "Rodney, are you blushing?"

"Don't be ridiculous," Rodney said, and walked out of the room.

Right into Sheppard's path.

"Hi, Rodney," Sheppard said as Rodney bumped headlong into him. Rodney leapt backwards and flattened himself against the door frame. Sheppard's brows knit.

Beckett called out, "And what brings you back here, Colonel?"

"Thought I'd give the blow thing another try," Sheppard said; Rodney wished that Sheppard would never say _blow_ again in his life. "See if I could get back to my duties."

"And I'll tell you the same thing I told Rodney, which is that three days is not enough time for you to recover," Beckett said peevishly. "Now away, all of you. I've got fungus in an incubator and if it goes over I'll make you eat it."

Rodney glared at Carson behind his back, and Sheppard snorted. "Thought it was worth a check," he muttered.

Rodney tried to say something in response. It sort of came out as "Erk."

"You all right, Rodney?" Sheppard asked, one eyebrow raised.

"Fine," Rodney said, "I'm just fine, Colonel, why do you ask?"

"Well," Sheppard said, "Your face is red, you're sweating, you're hugging the wall and you asked Dr. Beckett about me."

Oh shit oh shit oh shit. "No I didn't," Rodney blurted.

"He just said--"

"I was just, uh, making small talk," Rodney said, "you know, because I was down here anyway to, uh, have him take a look at...at...at my knee!"

"Your knee's still…?"

"And my allergies are acting up!" Rodney said. "Stay out of my lab!"

He prepared to charge off in a huff and faltered. Sheppard was leaning against the other side of the doorway, and angled in such a way that Rodney could either take a wide and very obvious detour around him, or bump into him and then potentially explode from the unresolved sexual tension. Sheppard noticed his hesitation and raised one eyebrow, one very blond eyebrow, "Rodney," he said, "I'm never in your lab."

"You drink my coffee," Rodney said.

"You've got the only coffee maker on that level."

Rodney took a deep breath, shut his eyes, and went to his happy place. A dozen blond Sheppards were dancing naked there. He went to his angry place instead. "Colonel Sheppard, I don't particularly care if Dr. Belkin wants to use you for a guinea pig, but my work requires the utmost concentration, and I cannot have unqualified personnel traipsing through my lab, upsetting my equipment, manhandling unknown technologies and _drinking all my coffee!"  
_  
Sheppard took a step back and put his hands up. "Easy, Rodney. Easy. Take a breather."

"Is there something wrong, Rodney?" Beckett called from inside the infirmary.

"Worry about your fungus, Carson!" Rodney shouted, and strode past Sheppard in what he considered one of his better huffs. It conveyed just the right mix of irritation, contempt and moral indignation.

Except when his trailing elbow just barely brushed Sheppard's hip. Then he jumped like he'd just hit a live wire, and decided to run for it.

Sheppard, looking pensive, watched him go.

XXXXX

Rodney stole a coffee maker from the botany department, put it in Zelenka's lab, and started locking his doors. He also found several very thin excuses to go on offworld missions now that his knee was healed, one of which resulted in him being held in an underground vault for a day and a half days with no food and only Ronon for company. The fact that he considered this preferable to being around Sheppard for any length of time proved that something was terribly wrong with the universe.

And despite Rodney's best efforts, Sheppard seemed to be more omnipresent than ever. He made a point of knocking on Rodney's locked doors to say hello every time he passed the lab, which was about fifty times a day. He sat next to Rodney during staff meetings and meals. He _smiled_ a lot.

Rodney could wear ear plugs in his lab, skip staff meetings (sometimes) and, at great hardship to himself, rework his meal schedule. He could not, however, tear his eyes away from that smile. Add in a surfboard and swap the uniform for some swimming trunks (or perhaps a Speedo, Rodney thought, and slapped himself) and Sheppard might as well be an advertisement for sunblock or some other fun beachy sort of product. Attractive blonds always seemed to need various beach-related gear. Rodney made the mistake of picturing Sheppard gamboling on a beach a la Baywatch and had to linger for half an hour after a staff meeting before he was sure it was safe to stand up.

This was getting out of hand.

A full week after the original mission, Beckett still didn't like the scans of Sheppard's lungs, Elizabeth still wouldn't order Sheppard out of the city, and Sheppard still hadn't stopped smiling all the damn time. Rodney was at his wits' end, ready to take to his bed, ready to leap headlong through the gate and hope he came out on a planet where nobody had ever heard of a blond John Sheppard.

And that was when he got the idea.

A terrible, wonderful idea.

"Carson," he said to Beckett early one morning, "I need to borrow one of the biochemistry labs."

Beckett looked at him with one raised eyebrow. "What for?"

"I'll explain later," Rodney said. "I only need it for an hour. Maybe two."

'You've got your own lab space--"

"Carson, please," Rodney said, leaning close to Carson, gripping his arm firmly. "I need this favor. Just this one. One teeny, tiny favor, and then everything will be much, much better."

Beckett leaned away from Rodney and glanced around, as if verifying that there were too many Marines in the mess hall for Rodney to do something truly dangerous. "Er. Okay. Whatever you say."

"I just need a lab for a couple of hours," Rodney continued, "and then the problem will be _solved."  
_  
"What problem is that?"

"Not important," Rodney said. "But I need this lab space. Just for an hour or two. You can be out of the lab for an hour or two, can't you?"

Beckett nodded fervently. "Oh, yes, I think I can manage to stay away from you for quite a long time, actually."

"Thank you," Rodney said, and took off for the level where the biochem labs were.

One hour and forty-three minutes later, he emerged from the lab with a wide grin, a large squeeze bottle, and mysterious brown stains up to his elbows. He marched off towards Sheppard's quarters, and nobody, not even Beckett, had the nerve to stop him.

XXX

It was a good thing that Sheppard was in his quarters when Rodney arrived, or he may well have burst into tears on the spot. There was no fear or anxiety now, just the brilliant clarity he generally associated with really good theories and panic attacks. He was going to fix everything, as usual. He _had_ to. He'd fix it, and then things would go back to normal and they could all go on with their lives and Sheppard could quit smiling at him.

The doors opened before Rodney knocked. "Oh hey," Sheppard said, and took a step backwards as if to hide the fact that he was carrying a gym bag and wearing track pants. "I, uh, I was just gonna go do something that absolutely will not make Beckett mad at me."

Rodney swallowed.

"What are you doing here, anyway?" Sheppard asked, catching on to the stained shirt and glassy eyes. "Something the matter?"

Rodney started, then thrust the squeeze bottle at Sheppard's chest. "You need to put this on your head right now."

Sheppard jumped away like it was a grenade. "Huh?"

"It's hair dye," Rodney said quickly, "it's hair dye for your, uh, anyway, just use it and then you can stop looking like Billy Idol and I can--" _come out of hiding_\-- "can give Carson the bottle back. And then everything will be _fine."  
_  
Sheppard gingerly accepted the bottle. "Where did you get it? The Athosians?

"I made it," Rodney said. Sheppard's eyes narrowed. Rodney sighed. "Look, it's just ammonia and an oxidizing tint in an aqueous solution. Any first-year chemistry student could make it."

"And you're a physicist."

"Chemistry is physics for people who can't handle the math!" Rodney said. "Now put it on!"

"How do I know this isn't going to make it worse?"

"I tested it."

"On who?

Actually, Rodney had snuck up on Zelenka with a pair of scissors to collect a test sample. "Not important," he declared. "It's safe so you can go use it and not be blond anymore."

Sheppard looked at him with one raised eyebrow, then slowly set the bottle aside. "What if I don't want to use it?"

Rodney started to hyperventillate. "You--you have to use it!"

"Why?"

"Because I said so!"

Sheppard took another step backwards into his quarters. "Look, Rodney, this started out kinda funny, but now you're just acting crazy."

"You know what? I am crazy!" Rodney bellowed. "Because you have been flitting around the city for a week, smiling and drinking my coffee and being blond and _I am about to loose it!_ So just fix your hair and then everything will go back to normal and I can stop thinking about surfboards.'

Sheppard took a deep breath and folded his arms across his chest. "Okay, let's take this one thing at a time. One, I have never _flitted_. Ever. Two, just because the machine is in your lab does not make it your damn coffee. Three, what the hell is it with you and my hair? Four: Surfboards?"

Rodney sighed. "You know, I don't know why I even bother with some people--"

"McKay." Sheppard grabbed Rodney's arm. "Answer me. 'Cause I've got enough problems with this damn medical hold and I don't need your mood swings on top of it."

"You think you've got problems?" Rodney muttered, but his attention was drawn to the hand on his elbow, the aboslutely not elegant fingers, the fading chemical burns. Christ, even Sheppard's arm hair had turned blond.

"Rodney."

"I..." Rodney licked his lips. "I find your hair distracting."

"Because...?"

_Because apparently I'm still sixteen._ "Because...it's blond."

Sheppard's eyes narrowed. "And you have a thing for blonds."

Rodney glanced up and down the corridor, but it was gloriously empty this time of the morning. "And you're obsessed with Ferris wheels," he muttered. "We all have our neuroses."

"The difference being, Rodney, that I don't get hysterical when I pass a carnival." Sheppard released Rodney's elbow and ran his fingers through his hair in a way that made Rodney squirm. "Why didn't you just say something?"

"Like what?" Rodney asked. " 'I can't concentrate around your hair'? 'Please leave the lab, you're making me horny'?"

"I would've settled for 'Wanna stop by my quarters tonight'?"

Rodney sputtered.

John yanked him into the room.

The first thing Rodney actually managed to articulate was, "Are you insane?"

"No, but I thought you were." Sheppard shut the door, grabbed Rodney by the face and kissed him.

The next thing Rodney was able to say, once Sheppard's tongue was out of his mouth, was, "Isn't there a, a rule about this sort of thing?"

"Rodney," Sheppard said, "we are in another galaxy. It sort of takes 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' to a whole new level."

"Oh. Well." Rodney licked his lips and studied Sheppard's face: the shadow of stubble along his jaw was coming in true brown, and in the slanted morning light that leaked through the window his hair took on weird highlights of yellow and orange. "Um. In that case...I suppose...that is, uh...I...can I touch it?"

Sheppard looked confused for a moment, then snorted and lowered his head. Rodney reached up, hesitantly, and brushed his fingers over the palest fringe of his bangs; the hair felt dry, coarse, almost fragile. But it wasn't snapping off, so Rodney touched it a little more firmly, then boldly raked all his fingers through, down to the thick, dark roots.

Sheppard looked up at him with bloodshot eyes, from under pale lashes. "Well?"

Rodney pounced.

XXX

"All right, Colonel," Beckett said as the scanner powered down. "What have you been up to?"

"Getting plenty of rest and not straining my poor abused lungs?" Sheppard said, trying to look cute.

Beckett sighed. "Your airways are still irritated. You've been doing something physically strenuous, in direct contradiction to my orders."

"Am I still under a medical hold?" Sheppard asked.

Beckett snorted and grabbed a PDA. "It'd serve you right if I extended it indefinitely, wouldn't it? Teach you to take proper care of yourself."

Sheppard smiled. "But..."

"But," Beckett sighed, "your lung capacity has returned to normal, so I have no medical grounds for further restricting your duties."

"Thanks, Doc," Sheppard said, bouncing to his feet. "Can't wait to share the good news."

"Just try not to overdo it," Beckett called behind him. "If you throw a clot and come back through the gate with an embolism, I'm not treating you."

Sheppard shrugged and smirked. "Can't help it, Carson. Don't you know blonds have more fun?"


End file.
